Women in Music

Accredited or not women have always been composing and performing music, and the line from Virginia Woolf “For most of history, Anonymous was a woman" applies to music as well.  

Over the last few years on the Classical Breakdown podcast, we’ve looked at the lives and music of just some of the women from music history, like Cecile Chaminade, Florence Price, Amy Beach, Germaine Tailleferre, Clara Schumann, and Fanny Mendelssohn. Through their stories, we hear world-class music, but it’s often part of a larger story of the sexism and violence they also faced, something their male counterparts didn’t.  

We will continue to focus on composers wrongly ignored throughout history, but we’ll also look at composers and music of today. I encourage you to listen to episode #82 which features works by 6 living women (Caroline Shaw, Barbara Croall, Laura Kaminsky, Nkeiru Okoye, Jessie Montgomery, Anna Clyne). Also, the next episode (coming out March 26) focuses on a large and brilliantly textured work of living American composer, Joan Tower.  

There are a few episodes on works by women from the past as well with a focus on symphonies by Louise Farrenc and Florence Price, a chamber work by Augusta Holmes and also a holiday choral work by Margaret Bonds.  

Women were by and large forbidden from playing in professional orchestras. The first US orchestra to accept a woman was in 1930 (harpist Edna Phillips, The Philadelphia Orchestra), but it took decades for this to be accepted more widely (Vienna Philharmonic, 1997), and there are still gender discrimination lawsuits today. But women have won auditions in positions throughout the orchestra and music more widely. There are several episodes exploring what it’s like to be an arts leader, a conductor, a concertmaster, or a bassoon player for example, all positions filled by women.  

I hope you enjoy these episodes and that they motivate you to learn more about what women have been doing in music in the past and today!